UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Climate Reality

When pursuing a future in fashion sustainability, it is imperative to be an Earth-systems thinker. When thinking of sustainable solutions, we should keep in mind that a change to one sphere will negatively affect all spheres. The four spheres: lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere are all impacted by the decisions in our daily lives as well as in fashion. For example, the water we use to chemically dye clothing gets polluted and ends up back in the ocean, the hydrosphere. From there, the water washes up on land and is absorbed into the lithosphere. The left-over water that was not absorbed gets evaporated into the atmosphere spreading those chemicals to the third sphere in the system. Lastly, we as humans breathe in this contaminated air disrupting the biosphere. However, the animals in the ocean and animals that eat from the land filled with chemicals are also affected. The same way the spheres are impacted by fashion they are impacted in climate change. It causes a chain reaction to take place.

When learning about climate change this past week, I learned that the way this happens is when greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide are released into the air, the atmosphere thickens. Thus, leading to energy being trapped, which warms the Earth. This is where all the recent extreme weather conditions are stemming from. Another explanation of this is 93% of extra heat trapped by man made global-warming pollution goes into the ocean as mentioned before. Ultimately this has caused detrimental storms like Hurricane Maria. Once these begin to take place, climate change strengthens the storms severity. This led to 2017 breaking the record of most losses due to weather in a year. This just goes to show that if we don’t make major changes soon we can ruin our Earth. As a matter of fact, it is being said that we could be the only species to cause our own extinction. Let’s not let it get that far by working together to save our shared home, Earth.